The judge instructing the case for alleged embezzlement of public funds in the Consell Esportiu de l’Hospitalet has commissioned the General State Intervention to provide expert evidence on the subsidies that the City Council of this town has granted to this sports promotion entity, especially school, according to the providence to which EL PERIÓDICO has had access. The National Police considers that there are “irregularities that are repeated continuously” since 2015 in the processing of these items worth about 210,000 euros per year. In this way, researchers highlight “passivity, permissiveness or neglect” in the face of lack of controlalthough the imputed technicians have defended that their action was correct and that the subsidies go through two audits.
The expert commissioned by the magistrate must analyze the subsidies that the Consell Esportiu requested from the City Council of l’Hospitalet and that were granted, in order to determine if the amount received in such concept between 2016 and 2019 is duly justified, in attention to the documentation brought to the court process.
The General State Intervention will also have to clarify the “existing mismatch” between the general accounts presented in the consistory for the request of these items and those delivered subsequently to the Generalitat, as well as whether the public funds delivered have been allocated to the services for which they were given. Or, on the other hand, “if fraudulent use has been made” as can be deduced from the accounting notes that are in the case.
Alleged cash payments without any fiscal control of services performed or not, suspicious charges of “disproportionate” diets, expenses without justification (such as buying books on Amazon, some self-help, buying t-shirts, paying fines, gasoline or professional associations) , the disbursement of 45,000 euros in installments for an alleged false dismissal of an imputed ex-regidor and member of the Consell, Cris Plaza, and the possible falsification of minutes of the entity’s meeting, are some of the investigated gossip, according to the judicial proceedings. Now it is necessary to specify each of the suspicions.
The police maintain that “the actors” who participate in the “structure” that is being traced are those responsible for the Consell Esportiu itself and the Sports area of the City Council. This places the current deputy mayor of l’Hospitalet de Llobregat, Cristian Alcázar, as one of those responsible for the plot of alleged embezzlement. In his opinion, there is “collusion” between this high municipal position; Eduard Gali, former director of the entity; and the municipal technicians “responsible for verifying the subsidies”. In that case, former councilor Cris Plaza, who resigned from his position when the scandal broke out and had held positions in the Consell, is also charged. Mayor Nuria Marín is only attributed for not having denounced her when she became aware of the irregularities. The socialist leader has requested the file. The main parties involved have always denied the irregularities and in their statements denied lack of control of the subsidies.
The allegedly rigged dismissal
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The judge, on the other hand, has opened a separate investigation for the dismissal in 2016 of Cris Plaza, who directed the Consell Esportiu for 17 years and who received compensation of 47,147 euros. The denouncer of the ‘Consell Esportiu case’, councilor Jaume Graells, assured that the dismissal had not been agreed upon and that, as Plaza explained, it was a voluntary resignation. “Agreed replacement & rdquor ;, headlined the municipal newspaper of L’Hospitalet. In fact, six months later, the PSC municipal group hired him as an advisor and in 2019 he became a councilor, in charge of the Sports area. In December 2020, when the case broke out, he left the record.
Investigators suspect that the dismissal was arranged and, therefore, Plaza would have improperly received compensation and, in addition, he would not have had the right to collect the 6,497 euros from Social Security during the period he was unemployed. The defenses, however, allege that a board of directors of the Consell did agree to fire him at the last meeting of 2016 and replace him with Eduard Gali. In this separate piece initiated by the judge, Plaza and Cristian Alcázar appear as defendants.